David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

“Thanks.”

The bum points at Junior. “Who you look like, man? I been rackin’ my brain.… Who the hell you look like? Somebody famous.”

“Yeah, people tell me that.”

The bum scratches his head.“Who is it? It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

Junior turns to Vickie as they walk away. “What’s he talking about? Who do I look like? My father? Who was he? You ever going to tell me?”

“Sometime I will.”

The bum shrugs and walks on.

The Squat ‘n’ Gobble Diner is one of many businesses in a strip mall surrounded by saturation-signage and urban sprawl. Its neon sign depicts a farmer chopping a turkey’s head off and blinks Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner .

An Animal Control truck is parked out front. A few harmless-looking, friendly dogs and cats are in cages, as is a raccoon and a rabbit.

Lorna’s voiceover: Daddy was working for Animal Control when he met Vickie at the Squat ‘n’ Gobble. Uncle Ray met Wendy at the same time. I hadn’t met Junior yet, but it wouldn’t be long before I did. It looked like Daddy and Vickie sort of fell in love right away. I think Ray and Wendy went along for the ride. They weren’t in love, not really. Wendy didn’t care. She was sick and she knew her life was basically over. What she needed was somebody to take care of her, that’s all. She didn’t know what she actually had, but whatever it was, it felt serious and chronic. First time I saw her I said, “She’s got a foot in the grave.” Ray said no, she was fine. Turned out I was right, he was wrong. And Vickie, I thought she was a burned out old hippie and didn’t have a living brain cell left in her head. Junior says she never would tell him anything about his father. Probably don’t remember.

Inside the Squat ‘n’ Gobble, Vickie and Junior set down their luggage and slide onto counter stools. Mickey Zook and his older brother, Ray, are the only other customers, sitting a few stools down. Mickey wears a khaki Animal Control uniform. Ray is in Carhartts, his hair red with brick dust.

A waitress gives Vickie, Junior and Wendy menus and stands there chewing gum, smoking a cigarette, her pencil poised above her order pad, waiting impatiently.

Junior scours the menu. “What’s this, lambfries? What’re those?”

The waitress blows a smoke-filled bubble. “Don’tcha know?”

“Never heard of ‘em.”

“They’re gooood, good, good. Trust me.”

“Yeah, but what are they?”

“Sheep’s things.”

“Huh?”

“Balls. They’re the balls off a sheep, battered and deep fried.”

Wendy is sickened by the idea. “Yuck.”

Junior closes the menu. “Shit, I’ll try ‘em.”

Vickie says she’s game, too. Wendy orders a grilled cheese.

“Somethin’ to drink?”

Wendy wants water, Vickie iced tea, Junior a Coors.

The waitress taps her pencil on Junior’s hat. “You twenty-one? You got a driver’s license? Anything shows your age?”

Vickie roots through her mesh purse, finds a Ziploc bag with documents inside. “Here’s his birth certificate. It’s even got his footprint if you want to check that out.”

Junior takes off a boot and puts a smelly foot on the bar. “You wanna see my foot?”

The waitress looks over the birth certificate. “Sorry, son. The City would close us down like that.”

Junior rolls a cigarette with Bugler tobacco and lights up. “Did my father smoke?”

“Yeah. Pall Malls.”

Vickie tosses Mickey a friendly smile. He instantly picks up his coffee and sits next to her. “Hi.”

“Well, hi, there.”

“Mike Zook. They call me Mickey. That’s my brother over there. Ray. He lays bricks.”

“Zook?” She rhymes it with “spook.”

“No, it rhymes with hook.”

“Glad to meet you. I’m Vickie. That’s Wendy. We’re sisters and you’re brothers. That’s ironic.” Wendy waves at Ray. He waves back. “And this is my son, Junior. We just couldn’t survive in San Francisco. It’s soooo expensive.”

“Too many cocks getting sucked, too,” Junior adds. “You could hear it at night. Slurp, slurp.”

Mickey and Vickie make strong eye contact. Ray sits next to Wendy.

A wedding chapel in a strip mall, a year later. The doors open and, unsmiling and matter of fact, Vickie and Mickey emerge as bride and groom, followed by Wendy and Ray, also as bride and groom. Behind them comes Lorna, eighteen, Mickey’s daughter by a previous marriage. Her nose, ears and eyebrows are pierced and ornamented, a stylized swastika tattooed on her neck. Black lipstick, long fingernails filed to points, bright orange butch cut with blue highlights. Then comes Junior, awkwardly dressed in an ill-fitting, out-of-style suit. A few other people straggle out behind him. In a shower of rice, the married couples drive away, Mickey and Vickie in the Animal Control truck, Ray and Wendy in a well-worn pickup.

Free State High School, 1995. Mickey, Vickie, Ray, Wendy and Junior sit in folding chairs watching a graduation ceremony. Wendy looks sicker than ever. She gazes dully at the ceremony, a trace of drool in the corners of her lips. Overdone makeup has given her a clownish, slightly demonic aspect.

The school band plays “Pomp and Circumstance” as white-gowned graduates promenade across the dais to receive diplomas from the principal, Mr. Smoot, an aging nerd with a crooked mustache, a rum-blossom nose and a pronounced tremor of the hands and head. Ready for a drink, he reads names rapidly from the end of the list.

“Johnny Shimizu?”

Johnny Shimizu receives his diploma enthusiastically, bows, shakes Mr. Smoot’s tremorous hand.

“David Waldrop…?”

David Waldrop receives his diploma. “Thank you, Principal Smoot.”

“Leslie Walker?”

Leslie Walker receives her diploma.

“Thank you, Principal Smoot.”

Lorna Zook nears the podium.

I remember graduation day. Don’t ask me how I got there. I hardly ever cracked a book, especially English. You have to wonder why they want to make people read all that ancient shit like Shakesbeard and Catch Her in the Rye. What’re you gonna learn from that? I missed more classes than periods .

Mr. Smoot’s trousers now show a urine spot. “And our last proud Free State graduate today…is it Zook, like spook, or Zook, like hook?”

“It rhymes with hook, Mr. Smut.”

The audience stands to clap for the graduates.

Mistaking the graduates for saints entering heaven, Wendy hums, almost inaudibly, the tune to “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

An obese girl, twelve, accidentally steps on Junior’s foot. He spits on the grass and angles the toe of his boot toward the shimmering wog. “Eat that you fat little piggly wiggly. You’re a disgrace to the white race. And watch where you step in the future.”

The girl sobs. Her obese brother, about fourteen, glares at Junior, who makes a throat-slitting gesture and wags his tongue. The brother quickly turns away.

Junior had a side to him that was a little bit hateful, but I was in love with him anyway. It wasn’t a real deep, deep thing. We’d been living in the same house ever since Daddy took up with Vickie and, I don’t know, we kinda got comfortable around one another, so we started getting it on, sexually speaking. Then Daddy married Vickie and I guess that put a bug in Junior’s head and he begged me till I said yes. I guess it was like, am I ever gonna be able to do better than him?

Mickey, Vickie and Ray beam with a kind of nervous, reserved pride. Wendy is expressionless. Junior anxiously approaches Mickey. “Me and Lorna’s been talking about getting married. You okay with that?”

Mickey looks at Vickie for guidance, then shrugs. “I guess I’m okay with that. You, Vickie?